The blogging generation

The news from our ICM poll today that a third of young people online have launched their own blog or personal website may come as a surprise to many older people only dimly aware of what blogging is all about. It is the latest example of the transforming effects of the information revolution that are leaving very few activities unaffected. Blogging simply involves setting up a site on the internet where you can "blog" your views together with photographs and invite comments from friends or interested people anywhere in the world, as long as they are online. It takes only a few minutes to set up a site with one of numerous free programs available on the web. Michael Howard was quite right in his valedictory speech to yesterday's Tory conference to say of the new generation: "Their youth has been shaped by the internet and the iPod, by cheap flights and mobile phones."

And not only youth. Blogging is now a mainstream activity for politicians, economists and, increasingly, corporations, plus the army of bloggers around the world who call governments and companies to account with instant rebuttals and who are setting up heir own form of "citizens' journalism" to provide a grassroots alternative to what is perceived as the corporate-driven agenda of many media organisations. Blogging in turn is only a small part of the digital revolution that has provided practically everyone in the industrialised world who wants one with a mobile phone that is itself cannibalising other gizmos such as cameras, music players, radios and 50 other functions. From cars that know where they are located to robot vacuum cleaners, and from internet shopping to playing online games with millions of others around the world, the digital revolution is sweeping all before it. Above all - thanks to search engines such as Google and Yahoo - there is free access (after paying a monthly fee to a service provider) to practically anything you want to know about anything. The limiting factor on acquiring knowledge these days is not being rich but whether you have the inclination to search for it or not. There are, of course, dangers - from inadequate monitoring of what children are doing to the avalanche of junk mail and pornography that assails users. But these are in principle problems that can be solved and should not be used in any way to slow down the pace of the most enabling revolution that has ever happened - though, of course, it could not have occurred without the success of earlier inventions such as electricity.

The biggest danger is the opening of a digital divide between those with access and those without. This can happen within countries but, more worryingly, between countries. Yet even in this vulnerable area technology is coming to the rescue. A week ago today a new not-for-profit laptop computer aimed at the third world and costing only $100 (£56) was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which hopes to sell 150 million by 2007. It is powered by clockwork and uses the free Linux operating system developed voluntarily by the world's "open source" community, a living tribute to the selfless motives of those involved. MIT admits that $100 is still too expensive for poor people and is hoping to bring the price down substantially. A parallel movement is taking place in mobile phones to produce a model that is affordable to poor people in developing countries who now face the prospect of being able to leap into the technological era even before the industrial revolution has finally reached them.

The lesson for Britain from all this is simple: an imperative need to put the maximum resources we can into education and providing the next generation with the skills they will need to keep a place in the van of the digital revolution. Judging by what our youngsters are up to they won't need much encouraging.